Asher Mahnke
早发白帝城
李白
朝辞白帝彩云间，千里江陵一日还。
两岸猿声啼不住，轻舟已过万重山。
Early Departure from Baidi
In the morning, I took leave of Baidi, surrounded by multicolored clouds. I returned to Jiangling, a thousand li away, within a single day.
The cries of monkeys on both riverbanks did not cease.
My light boat had already passed through ten thousand layers of mountains.
—Translated from Chinese by Asher Mahnke
Early Departure from Baidi
At dawn I left Baidi, bathed in clouds of rainbow hue,
Though a thousand miles to Jiangling, I returned within a day.
While the gibbons cried without a pause,
My light boat had already passed ten thousand layered peaks.
—Translated from Chinese by Asher Mahnke
Erasure Poem
Complicated
complicated
family tree
west germanic
german
modern german
polish
swedish
baltic sea
norwegians
ukrainian
yiddish
english
mandarin
cantonese
arabic
gujarati
bombay
complicated
it gets complicated
proverbial american mutts
farthest thing from purebred
immigrated
hostility
beaten
physically beaten
not a word of … heritage
refugees
drop and lose your past
dangerous
complicated
—Asher Mahnke
Translators Statement
Li Bai (李白), (“courtesy name” Taibai (字太白诗仙)), was born in Tang China in 701 and is considered one of the most important poets of the Tang Dynasty, the “Golden Age of Chinese Poetry”. His style is known for its sentimental and reflective tones, often writing about his life, nature, friends, and solitude. He received praise from many other poets, aristocrats, and even the emperor, from whom he was given the nickname the “immortal exiled from heaven.” He is attributed to around 1,000 poems, 34 of which made it into the anthology Three Hundred Tang poems by Qing Dynasty scholar Sun Zhu in 1763. Some of Li Bai’s poems are still taught in schools in present-day China (“Li Bai” [American]), (“Leaving Baidi in the Morning…”), (“Li Bai” [ECPH]), (“From the Wall to the Water…”), (“Baidi” [Wikipedia]), (“公孙述.”)
"Early Departure from Baidi" (早发白帝城) is a poem by Li Bai written in 759, the second year of Qianyuan– the Reign of the Emperor Suzong. Baidicheng is an ancient fortress and temple on Baidi Mountain in the modern-day county of Fengjie, Chongqing, on the north shore of the Yangtze river. This is where he was released by the emperor from his exile and imprisonment for political dissent. The imperial city of Baidi was named after Baidi, the white emperor, one of the five emperors in ancient Chinese legends, when Gongsun Shu conquered the city, as it was said to have a mysterious white mist surrounding it, or that someone saw a white dragon there. It is also known as the “City of Poems” simply because there are so many poems about it.
The poem visualizes his journey back home to Jiangling on the Yangtze River. It shows his happiness from being pardoned, with even the monkeys “crying in joy.” It also describes the beauty and magnificence of the mountains and rivers, and writes of the fast flow yet lightness of the boat. It uses exaggeration and fantasy to write in an elegant yet free and natural manner. Yang Shen, a Ming Dynasty poet, praised it, saying: "It shocked the wind and rain and made the ghosts and gods weep" (“Baidicheng” [Steemit]), (“白帝城”), (“白帝城...” [百度百科]), (“奉节白帝城...”), (“公孙述.” [百度百科]), (“唐朝” [百度百科]), (“历史上...”), (“乾元.” [百度百科]), (“公孙述.” [维基媒]), (“三國劉備逝世的地方.” [维基媒...]), (“中国传说时代君主.” [维基媒...]), (“中國古代傳說中五帝之一.” [维基媒...]), (“重庆市东北部的一个县.” (维基媒...]), (“巫山.” [百度百科]), (“早发白帝城.” [百度百科]), (“早发白帝城 [李白]”), (“早发白帝城原文拼音版注音...”)
In this project, I interviewed a family member about our family’s history, focusing especially on language. For mine, I interviewed my father. I asked him about our ancestors, the languages they spoke, societies and governments, and how we were connected to all of this. I learned about my father's side of the family, and all the complicated branches and histories of our ancestors, which was very informative but also generally gratifying. This reminded me of a quote from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s Decolonizing Language and Other Revolutionary Ideas; “Knowledge is a question of continuously adding to what we already know in a dialectical play of mutual impact and illumination. The normal cognitive process starts from the known and heads toward the unknown. Every new step makes more of the unknown known and therefore adds to what is already known. The new known enriches the already known, and so on … Knowledge of the world begins where one is” (Wa Thiong’o 11). After this, we chose a poem to translate from one of these languages. To translate my poem, I worked with Ashley Tie, a Chinese student at Columbia. We met over a zoom call to discuss the poem. By talking to her, and with her help and lots of work, I learned a lot about the poem, as well as the language and historic styles of poetry, including Tang poetry and Classical Chinese quatrain. Overall, It was a fun and interesting process, and it made me think a lot about history and language, not just the poem in front of me. The translations themselves focus on different themes or poetic approaches. The literal translation takes the poem at face value and defines each character, which can be confusing to interpret, but a cool reference to see how the words and meaning come together. It was also interesting to learn about poetic styles, one translation focusing on the grammatical structure, and another on wording and poetic flow. For example, while the literal translation is “Morning depart White Emperor colored clouds amid,” my “poetic” styled translation is “At dawn I left Baidi, bathed in clouds of rainbow hue.” This translation takes the content of the line and rewords it into a more poetic style. Another example of this, for the grammatical poem, is the translation from “Two shores monkeys’ cries do not stop” into “The cries of monkeys on both riverbanks did not cease”. This translation shows how the line might sound in English, even if not the exact translation. In general, it was a little difficult to find information in the poems and learn about to then attribute things like the author, setting, and context, but I think what made these translations good was changing of wording while keeping consistent meaning to the original; I used to think whatever what closest to the original would be the best translation, but this showed me that the exact literal translation isn’t actually always the closest to what the poem means.
For our erasure poems, we used the transcript of our family interview and “erased” certain parts to leave a new text behind. For mine, I wanted to focus on the many sides of our history. For example, my father described our family as “proverbial America mutts,” which really stuck out to me. Some of the phrases I decided to keep were a few of the languages and locations of my ancestors mentioned. I also included some words that struck me about how my family lived, and the forms of oppression or the lifestyle they lived. My poem is made mostly of individual words joined together to create a sort of narrative. For example, I used phrases like “not a word of … heritage” and “drop and lose your past” to tell the story of some of my ancestors' experiences with their languages and having to “lose” it. Another quote from Decolonizing Language mentions this idea. Thiong'o writes “The problem is their relationship in terms of hierarchy, My language is higher in the hierarchy than yours. My culture is higher than yours. Or my language is global; yours is local. And in order for you to know my language, you must first give up yours” (Wa Thiong’o 12). This made me want to connect and learn more about my family and the many languages they spoke, whether recently or many generations ago. In general, this process of interviewing, analyzing and “writing” was very interesting to me. I got to learn about my family and history and work through text to create something new.
Works Cited
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“Early Departure from Baidi City by Li Bai (Li Po) - Chinese Poetry.” Cn-Poetry.com, www.cn-poetry.com/libai-poetry/departure-from-baidi-city.html.
Kimberly Gladman. “Leaving Baidi in the Morning by Li Bai (translated by KG Jackson) - Kind over Matter.” Kind over Matter, kindovermatter.com/leaving-baidi-in-the-morning/.
“Leaving Baidi in the Morning | Nadia Colburn.” Nadia Colburn, nadiacolburn.com/leaving-baidi-in-the-morning/.
“Li Bai (701 - 762 Ce).” ECPH China, www.berkshirepublishing.com/ecph-china/2018/01/08/li-bai-701-762-ce/.
South China Morning Post. “From the Wall to the Water: discovering the ruins of Suyab, the birthplace of legendary Chinese poet Li Bai, in Kyrgyzstan.” South China Morning Post, www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2185208/discovering-ruins-suyab-birthplace-legendary-chinese-poet-li-bai.
Wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ. Decolonizing Language and Other Revolutionary Ideas. The New Press, 2025.
W.F, Andrew. “李白 Li Bai: 下江陵/ 早發白帝城 Downstream to Jiangling/ Early Departure from Baidi City.” Blogspot.com, chinesepoemsinenglish.blogspot.com/2008/01/tangs-poems.html.
“白帝城.” 百度百科, baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%99%BD%E5%B8%9D%E5%9F%8E/25893.
“白帝城·瞿塘峡景区.” 百度百科, baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%99%BD%E5%B8%9D%E5%9F%8E%C2%B7%E7%9E%BF%E5%A1%98%E5%B3%A1%E6%99%AF%E5%8C%BA/61708179.
“奉节白帝城·瞿塘峡景区_重庆市人民政府网.” Cq.gov.cn, cq.gov.cn/zjcq/cycq/zmjd/zqaaaaajjq/202312/t20231226_12744583.html.
“公孙述.” 百度百科, baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%85%AC%E5%AD%99%E8%BF%B0/7389392.
“李白.” 百度百科, baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%9D%8E%E7%99%BD/1043.
“李白 早發白帝城 Translation: Setting off Early from Baidi City, by Li Bai (下江陵) | East Asia Student.” East Asia Student, eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/li-bai-zao-fa-baidi-cheng/.
“唐朝.” 百度百科, baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%94%90%E6%9C%9D/53699.
“历史上，第一个割据蜀地的皇帝，浅谈公孙述的崛起和灭亡！_公元.” Sohu.com, www.sohu.com/a/446692485_353840.
“乾元.” 百度百科, baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B9%BE%E5%85%83/9986111.
维基媒体项目贡献者. “公孙述.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E5%85%AC%E5%AD%99%E8%BF%B0.